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Thursday, May 10, 2012

EVIDENCE HIDDEN AT LOCKERBIE TRIAL

A letter from Pat Shearer, the current boss of Dumfries and Galloway police, has now admitted that statements about a break-in at Heathrow airport, just hours before the December 1988 Lockerbie bombing, were kept hidden by Dumfries and Galloway Police until 1999.

Mr Shearer also reveals that 'the Crown Office' knew about the break-in before the trial, but failed to tell the defence team.

"We heard the details of these devices in the Zeist courtroom from Crown witness Herr Gobel, a West German forensics expert, how these IEDs ... had a non-adjustable interval of 35-45 minutes from take-off to explosion if put on an airplane.

"The Lockerbie aircraft managed just 38 minutes before the explosion. Herr Gobel's evidence made it plain that such a device could not have been flown from Frankfurt to Heathrow let alone from Malta, unless it was armed at Heathrow airport. Otherwise, it would have had to be introduced at Heathrow to avoid explosion en route. Yet there was no known evidence to support introduction or arming of such a device at Heathrow. We now know that there was precisely this evidence available but that the police/Crown Office had failed to pass it to the defence team or the court ("Vital evidence on Lockerbie was withheld", The Herald, May 3).

"The point at issue is simple: why was this evidence not available to the trial court? The UN's special observer to the trial, Professor Hans Koechler, described the trial as not representing justice because of failures of the prosecution to share information with the defence.

"Sooner or later the truth will out, but I fear that the longer it takes, the greater will be the damage to our legal system's reputation. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission was correct in eventually deciding that 'there may have been a miscarriage of justice'. The appeal which followed, held in the knowledge of the plaintiff's progressive illness, seemed to some also to be subject to unwarranted delaying tactics by the Crown Office, though combined with the illness of a judge.

"The Scottish Government does have the powers to order an inquiry. The relatives and the people of Scotland have a right to know the truth."